Firefighters on the scene of the crash (epa)
KYIV, August 22, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- All 170 passengers and crew reported to have been on board a Russian airliner are believed to have died when it crashed earlier today near the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk.

Leonid Kastorsky, the head of the regional office of the Ukrainian Emergency Situations Ministry, said "it is already known for certain at this time that there are no survivors. Emergency units that arrived 10 minutes after the plane crash managed to extinguish the fire. However, nobody could be rescued."

A spokeswoman for Ukraine's Emergency Situations Ministry, Tetyana Litvinova, told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service that there were 160 passengers and 10 crew members on board.